2013 Korean Grand Prix

Which F1 driver was the best performer during the Korean Grand Prix weekend?

Review how each driver got on below and vote for who impressed you the most during the last race weekend.

Korean Grand Prix driver-by-driver

Red Bull

Sebastian Vettel – Asserted Red Bull’s superiority on Saturday to take his 42nd career pole position. There was no skipping his second run in Q3 this time although it turned out he could have done. He might have come under more pressure from Grosjean had the Safety Car not been deployed, but with clean starts and restarts the result rarely looked in doubt.

Mark Webber – Knowing he had a ten-place grid penalty Webber sacrificed some downforce to improve his straight-line speed for the race. He was a few tenths off Vettel in Q3 which left him 13th on the grid once his sanction was applied. After dodging the Ferrari crash at the start he passed the McLarens, Maldonado and Ricciardo. But Perez’s tyre failure right in front of him forced a third pit stop, and after the restart he was taken out by Sutil.

Ferrari

Fernando Alonso – Made the best of his Ferrari in qualifying to line up fifth but was pessimistic about his race prospects. That turned out to be a realistic assessment as he wasn’t even able to pass Hulkenberg’s Sauber, despite his best efforts. Vied for position with Hamilton at one point and rather generously left the door open at turn four.

Felipe Massa – Lost time in the first practice session with a punctured tyre which had to be replaced. In final practice he was worryingly far off Alonso’s pace on the mediums tyres but got it together in qualifying to line up behind his team mate. He had his Alonso’s quick reaction to thank for the fact his lap one blunder didn’t wipe them both out. Took a while to get past Gutierrez, eventually doing so after Rob Smedley had suggested using all his KERS at the final corner. The Safety Car helped him on his way to recovering two points for ninth.

McLaren

Jenson Button – Believed he would have reached Q3 had he not lost around 0.15s behind Raikkonen, who he had waved past on his out-lap. For the second year running he was blamelessly hit at turn three on the first lap, though the consequences were less severe this time. Despite losing time with a front wing change and another delay when his pit exit light turned red at his second stop, Button took eighth with a long, 33-lap stint on medium tyres, only losing out to Rosberg three laps from home.

Sergio Perez – Pipped Button by three-thousandths of a second in Q2 but also failed to reach the final ten. Passed Maldonado twice in the first part of the race, and the stewards scrutinised his battles with Di Resta and Massa before judging both to be fair. He finished behind the latter, taking the final point.

Lotus

Kimi Raikkonen – Crashed at turn 18 at the end of the first practice session, but his team were able to repair his car quickly enough that his afternoon running was not seriously affected. Still not happy with the performance of the revised tyres in qualifying he could only manage tenth after a messy Q3 lap. Things got better quickly once the race started: he dodged the turn three carnage and passed Ricciardo and Alonso. A slow first stop dropped him behind the latter again but his fortuitously-timed second stop, six laps before the Safety Car appeared, gained him that place plus another on Hulkenberg. Pounced on Grosjean after the first restart to claim second, but never looked like catching Vettel.

Romain Grosjean – Continued his promising showing from Singapore and was quick enough on the medium tyres in Q1 to save a second set of super-soft tyres for the final part of qualifying, which he impressively used to split the Mercedes drivers. Passed Hamilton at the start and was set to pressure Vettel with a short second stint and long third stint before the Safety Car spoiled his plans. Paid the price for making a mistake at Raikkonen, then seems to have somewhat optimistically lobbied his team to try to have the positions reversed. The fact he was rarely within DRS range of Raikkonen at this point rather undermined his claim he was being held up.

Mercedes

Nico Rosberg – Wasn’t happy with his car’s balance in qualifying and was disappointed with the end result of fourth (after Webber’s penalty). He looked happier in the race and was in with a chance of a podium finish when his front wing dramatically failed. Recovered to pass Button for seventh near the end.

Lewis Hamilton – Said after qualifying he felt he’d got everything out of the car to qualify second alongside Vettel. But the race went less well: he lost out to Grosjean early on and was mystified by his loss of pace on medium tyres in the second stint. He was unlucky to have to do another lap after Rosberg first overtook him, then headed pit-wards with a broken wing. Hulkenberg passed Hamilton at the restart, which was unexpected, though he defended well against Alonso. Couldn’t crack the Sauber’s defences for fourth, though.

Sauber

Nico Hulkenberg – Said Q1 and Q2 went “like clockwork” but was surprised to lose four tenths of a second in Q3. His team mate actually made a better start but the turn three incident reversed their fortunes and put Hulkenberg ahead of Alonso. It was a surprise he was able to stay there, never mind pinch another place off Hamilton and keep the Mercedes driver tucked up too.

Esteban Gutierrez – Had a spin on Friday as he acclimatised to a circuit he hadn’t driven on before. Nonetheless he improved on his best qualifying position again with eighth and made a great start, passing Alonso, before losing a lot of time trying to avoid contact at turn three. Couldn’t make his way out of the midfield quickly enough to get into the points – an opportunistic lunge on Maldonado ended up costing him a position to Massa, and Perez knocked him back to 11th.

Force India

Paul di Resta – Made it beyond Q1 despite being held up by Bianchi, but trying to blame the eliminated Marussia driver for his lacklustre showing in Q2 was stretching things a bit. Disliked the car’s handling on medium tyres in the race and when he crashed out there was no ducking responsibility this time: “I have to hold my hands up and apologise to the team,” he said.

Adrian Sutil – Said his Q2 lap was “right on the limit” and was only a tenth of a second off making the cut for the top ten. After picking up front wing damage on the first lap he began to recover but lost control of his car following the Safety Car restart and crashed into Webber. Like his team mate, he also provided the necessary apologies.

Williams

Pastor Maldonado – Tested a new front wing on Friday and was pleased with the results, but didn’t use it on Saturday. He went out in Q1 and vented his displeasure at his team on Twitter, pointing out the improvement Sauber had made since their difficult start to the season. Gained nine places at the start, thanks mostly to Massa’s spin, but was always going to struggle to hang on to them. Trying to run to the end on 32-lap old tyres didn’t work out as he slipped from the points places.

Valtteri Bottas – Used the new front wing on Saturday and out-qualified Maldonado but wasn’t able to get into Q2. He was delayed at turn three at the start but made up places from there, eventually passing his team mate for 12th place.

Toro Rosso

Jean-Eric Vergne – Perplexed by his car on Friday which seemed to get worse as the track conditions improved. Gained a few places at the start but soon found himself at the tail of the midfield. He was set to finish there when a severe handling problem forced him to stop.

Daniel Ricciardo – After a problematic practice he raised his game in qualifying as usual but it wasn’t enough to get the Toro Rosso into Q3. He was the only driver to start on the medium tyres and made it to lap 19 on them. He had a slow pit stop for reasons that aren’t clear, though his team were seen cleaning up the remains of a dead bird afterwards. Oddly he was forced out of the race with a familiar problem, one which also seemed to affect his team mate: “I had the same scenario here last year, when I came down to turn three with a few laps to go, I braked and the car immediately shot to the left. That time it cost me one place. Once I got out of the cockpit this time, I could see there was a mechanical problem at the front left corner.”

Caterham

Charles Pic – Spent Friday practice trying to improve his car’s traction and was still not completely happy with it on Saturday morning. Out-qualified Van der Garde despite catching traffic on his best lap. Collected 14th in the race, one place shy of the 13th the team need to pass Marussia in the constructors’ championship, but earned a ten-place grid penalty for his third reprimand of the year.

Giedo van der Garde – Was happy with his car’s balance in the second practice session but, like his team mate, found the super-softs gave him a lot of understeer. Pic pipped him by a tiny margin in qualifying. A drive-through penalty in the race for forcing Bianchi wide at turn one, which dropped him to last, though he recovered to pass both the Marussias.

Marussia

Jules Bianchi – Rodolfo Gonzalez drove his car in first practice, spinning into the wall early on. In qualifying he was pleased to be closer to the Caterhams but picked up a penalty – and his second reprimand of the season – for holding up Di Resta. Was preoccupied with tyre management during the race and unable to get on terms with the Caterhams. A third reprimand will also see him take a ten-place grid penalty in Japan.

Max Chilton – Said he was “really encouraged” to be close to Bianchi’s pace in qualifying. But like Bianchi he didn’t have the pace to race with the Caterhams.

Agreed, but more than driver of the weekend, HÃ¼lkenberg to me is sort of the dicovery of the season, although it’s not his first season.

Why has no big team signed him yet? Hopping to the next midfield team with cashflow problems could only be a good strategy if a top drive is available for 2015. Mclaren-Honda, maybe? If I was Martin Whitmarsh and if I had some problem or other with firing Perez after only one season, I’d at least be on the phone to HÃ¼lkenberg about 2015, if not also 2014.

Agreed, the Hulk was amazing, otherwise I might have been tempted to give Webber a sympathy vote, afterall he was looking at an excellent finish until Lady Misfortune let him have it with both barrells. Kudos allso to the Lotus duo.

Grosjean finished where he should be finishing regularly. If he’d beaten his former world champion team mate, then yeah, +1… But he didn’t. He just didn’t finish as far down the order as we’ve become accustomed to. Or crash out at T1.

I hope he continues to perform better, because I used to be a big fan of his. Perhaps getting number one status in the team next year will help.

Perhaps I’m being harsh, but second chances are rare in F1. RG has had three.

I think that the one racer who can win this title is Nico Hulkenberg.
It is obvious he hasn’t the package to fight for this high position. But he used all possibilities he was given.
It was Alonso(defensive)like performance from Hulkenberg. There wasn’t a single mistake from Nico.
He withstanded a sturdy fight with several WDCs plus high-quality racers such as Rosberg and Webber.
He resisted like hell. What I liked most in this race is that Nico was entering the 1-2 corners in the
same way for entire race. Even when Lewis overtook Nico, Hulk-himself:-) didn’t change his approach to
these corners and again had beautiful exit. This kind of striving will harden Nico and make him better.
To sum up, Nico made Korean race 2013 worth to watch again.

PS: and I must add that Nico actually showed a difference between a fast driver (Grosjean/Perez) and F1-racer. He improved his racing skills, he got rid of mistakes. I believe that if he continues with same attitude then he will become another complete racer (implying Alonsoâ„–2) or even better.

Who exactly is voting for Alonso? First time he’s gone backwards on the first lap this year, and finished 1 spot lower than his starting position (and would have been another if Webber didn’t have Webber luck).

I’m a Vettel fan. I have at times found it annoying when he didn’t win DotW after having yet another great weekend. But this weekend, there really is no question at all. This time it’s Hulkenberg, without a single shred of doubt. Great qualifying, great start, great race. Got passed by the faster Merc but took the place again before Hamilton could blink. Sure, his car allowed for it, but it was impressive nonetheless.

To think he might not even land a seat next year is beyond unbelievable.

@tripperhead I’m a gung-ho Vettel fan, but i wouldn’t have voted for Vettel this time. It’s Hulk. But probably the ones who voted for Vettel take into account the DOTWEEKEND thing, and his grand Chelem jutifies a vote for Vettel. (We need a points system so much!!!!)

I voted for the Hulk too but seeing Vettel at 15% is really low I think. He’s definetely NÂ°2 after Hulk this weekend: made no errors and could hold his lead during the first lap with a Red Bull lacking straight-line speed. Once he arrived at sector 2 as the leader, who all knew the race was over.

Well at this point he’s decidedly in the #2 spot.
With Hulkenbergs performance it even surprises me there are 15 people out of 100 that vote for Vettel – or that a rough third of the voters don’t vote for Hulkenberg :)

Fernando Alonso â€“ Made the best of his Ferrari in qualifying to line up fifth

I don’t think that’s true @keithcollantine: he was slower in Q3 than in Q2 again, whilst the average improvement margin was around 3 tenths (I did calculate the exact figures on another article). In terms of absolute grid position you have a point, but not in terms of his qualifying performance.

What I’m really questioning though @tripperhead is why RÃ¤ikkÃ¶nen is quite conclusively ahead of Grosjean though. By his own admission, he messed up his qualifying lap – hence why he was 6 positions down on Grosjean. Then only reason realistically he finished ahead of him (credit for a great re-start however from the safety car) was because he gained so many places during the pit phase before the idiotic fire Marshall’s decided to go for a drive. So quite how he justifies 9% of the votes at the time of writing (21/22 votes) is slightly baffling, for a driver of the weekend poll, when you had the performances of Vettel and HÃ¼lkenberg to consider.

With Hulkenbergs performance it even surprises me there are 15 people out of 100 that vote for Vettel

That doesn’t really surprise me @mattds – both did the absolute maximum they could and nothing less, so they would both be worthy winners. But I must agree that HÃ¼lkenberg wholly deserves his current winning margin – his measured, assertive, effective and canny defensive driving against no less than Hamilton and Alonso was mesmerisingly good. It wasn’t the absolute perfect qualifying lap (which I do think is 1-0 to Vettel in fairness), not the absolute perfect start (again, 1-0 to Vettel) but his racecraft and consistency merit him being rated number 1, absolutely.

Raikkonen had a *great* race. He overtook Alonso’s Ferrari and Grosjean’s Lotus on track. Plus another car or two. And this on a track where some others were stuck behind noticeably slower cars. And then he managed to not even give a sniff of a chance to Grosjean, who was on tyres fresher by 4 laps. Nico and Vettel are justifiably ahead but no one else comes close.

Why get so worked up for 1% vote, 4 out of 400+? To each one their reasons….

I’ve often voted for ALO but not today, he had a quite unremarkable weekend. His best moment was the avoidance of the Massa-led missile when it certainly looked like both Ferraris were DNF-bound. That took some skill. Even so, Hulk got through and it ruined ALO’s chances for a podium.

My 3 candidates for DOTW are Hulk, Seb and Kimi. I would have considered Grosjean also but lost a lot of respect for him when he asked for a pointless TO, he wasn’t really faster than Kimi and was never going to challenge Seb for the win.

Well there can be only one winner this weekend. And that has to be Hulkenberg
What he did in that Sauber was absolutely amazing. Hopefully he can get a podium in the remaining races.
What I don’t understand is how Alonso still has 10% of the votes. The same as Vettel!

Of course it’s Hulkenberg! He absolutely drove the wheels off that car. His defensive driving was one of the best I’ve seen recently. He held off faster cars and punched well above his height. One of the best drives this year.

As I’m sure most others will do, I voted for Hulk, but honorable mentions to both Vettel and Grosjean.

It wasn’t as easy as it looked for Vettel, while he was able to pull out the 4 second gap pretty quickly after the second safety car period, it quickly stabilized and he didn’t start to disappear from the Lotus’ and they were able to keep him within striking distance if Vettel had a major issue. With the high tire wear he was experiencing, it was a nice, controlled drive from him to bring the car home in P1.

Grosjean on the other hand has shown a huge improvement as of late, he seems to have found his speed and a cool, calm racing head to go with it, his moves on Hamilton early in the race, both offensively and defensively were superb. Since the Summer Break we’ve seen a Grosjean that has been capable of not only taking the fight to, but also beating his team-mate, a driver many hold as one of the best in the sport.

Still lobbying for a top three vote @keithcolante .
Since HÃ¼lkenberg’s win for this is a foregone conclusion, I strategically voted Vettel, who deserves second. A shame I can’t also vote for Grosjean in third.

Agree a top 3 option would be nice if it’s not too hard to implement. Sometimes the winner is too much of a foregone conclusion (like some of the races you could say!) so would be interesting to see the 2nd and 3rd choices – maybe using a points system to rate them, eg. 25-18-15.

@robo RÃ¤ikkÃ¶nen wasn’t bad this weekend (obviously, he still finished second after all!) but he was far from second best driver. His qualifying performance was simply poor, no more elaboration needed. And he benefited immensely from the safety car deployment, not by virtue of his superior pace. Grosjean ahead of RÃ¤ikkÃ¶nen in my books, and Vettel certainly ahead of the pair of them (his qualifying lap was absolutely perfect, his getaway perfect, his race perfect. Not one mistake).

Don’t really care about quali, as long as you on podium and ahead of someone, who qualified better. I love Gro, and support him wholeheartedly, but in this race Raikkonen was on top again. Romain couldn’t get his position back. And during the race I thought he was ORDERED to chase Raikkonen, but actually it was definitely not this way, so this one is my minus for Romain. But it’s just for me, you know. In Hungary Gro was my number one despite his finish.

@vettel1, it is driver of the weekend poll. You should discount the results according to the cars potential. Yes Seb was flawless, and yes he is as good or better than any current F1 driver, and yes he got the trifecta, but he was never challenged and his car was the best bar none for the track so a vote for the driver of the weekend has to take that performance advantage into account.

@vettel1, OK, this poll would be totally pointless if we always voted for the winner, this poll is to recognise the driver we consider did the best job with the car he had, in other words to win this poll a driver should exceed expectations. Seb definitely deserves recognition and he gets it and a trophy on the podium, this poll should recognise the driver whose performance was outstanding in lesser machinery.

@droiddamudi did Kimi damage the wing himself? Because that would be considered poor driving.

All I could find on Autosport was

Kimi Raikkonen admits an error he made during qualifying

and

“I made a mistake so I knew the lap was gone,” he admitted.

How Kimi is receiving more votes than Romain is embarrassing to the members on this website.

Romain has been quicker than Kimi all weekend, in every practice session, in qualifying, and set a quicker lap than Kimi in the Race.

Romain made one mistake the whole weekend, and that was during the final stages of the GP during the S/C restart and his team mate (whose pit wall strategy men had played the safety car cards excellently to get him up into third position) took advantage. Romain was then ordered to not race Kimi. Thus ending his terrific weekend performance on another case of team orders technicalities.

The Hulk was clearly the DOTW, but Romain got my vote because he was equally as expressive, leading the team, and the only driver to poise a threat to Vettel.

@diceman I don’t think anybody could consider Alonso or Raikkonen for 3rd ( and I am a head-over-heels Alonso fan). Plus I think Grosjean and Vettel should swap places in your list – Grosjean did great, a great overtake on Hamilton and good, consistent racing. Vettel, you know, the win was kind of his own to lose with that RB9 of his.

Yeah now Alonso only has 1% of votes, but when I wrote that comment he had 5% and he tied third place with RÃ¤ikkÃ¶nen. Now RÃ¤ikkÃ¶nen is third with 9% of votes, so pretty many have considered him as a driver of the weekend ;-)

Vettel and Grosjean were both great during the weekend, but I decided to give second place for Vettel because of his grand slam. I also think Rosberg deserves more votes than 0%, because without his front-wing accident he would probably have reached podium.

@diceman Yep, agreed about Rosberg there. Just plain bad luck – and it’s high time he got another podium as well. And it wasn’t a Grand Chelem by Sebastian – he didn’t lead every lap actually. Grosjean frankly did a better job than Vettel keeping the machinery in mind.

I don’t understand why so many people voted Raikkonen. He literally only finished where he did because profited from the mistakes of others, be it Mercedes, Perez, Grosjean or BEEP BEEP I’M A SAFETY JEEP. He had a good race, but Grosjean, Hulkenberg and Vettel deserve the votes so much more!

Seriously, Nico demonstrated yesterday that it pays to have a top driver in your team. Gutierrez looks to be a talented racing driver, and he is on occasion commendably close to his team mate in qualifying, but if Sauber had gone for two pay drivers, they might still be behind Williams on zero points. Instead, Hulkenberg has overtaken Toro Rosso in the standings and if he keeps going like this, they could catch Force India too.

Hulkenberg. Just incredible, as in Monza. Not as great in qualifying, but even better in the race, as he was really put under pressure for the entire length. Outstanding work by him, although judging by Gutierrez’s great weekend the Sauber is definitely not the same it was a few months ago.